Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many victims contacted the CPS to make a referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme in the most recent time period for which figures are available; whether his Department holds data on the number of referrals by type of offence in the relevant cases; and how many of those referrals resulted in a change to the sentence length of the offender.

Requests for referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) Scheme are made to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO). Many victims contact the AGO directly and do not go to the CPS, and therefore the CPS do not hold all relevant data. All requests made via the CPS are reflected in the AGO statistics.

The AGO received 787 requests to review sentences under the ULS in 2020 and 144 requests were from victims and family members of victims. Of those 84 were eligible for review within the scheme and 14 of those were referred to the Court of Appeal. The data held by the AGO shows of the 14 cases referred: 4 were homicide cases, 8 were non-fatal offences against the person and 2 cases were categorised as rape and sexual offences. The Court of Appeal increased the sentence in 9 of those cases.